The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1887-11-17
"sTRIKING OIL.Y
By SOPHIE b. lIERRICK.

stop to remember what it really means,
aud yet thirty years ago such term was
never used, for the very fact that gave
rise to it did not exist.
A hundred years or SO ago a curious
sight might have been seen in the Indians
country of western Pennsylvania. Early
in the morning one Of the squaws would
carry dirty blanket down to the borders
of the stream. A natural conclusion
would be that she was about to give her
blanket much.needed washing. But
no instead of dipping the blanket in the
water and rubbing and squeezing and
wringing it, she merely filings it out on
the surface Of the stream, and when it
becomes soaked draws it toward her and
begins carefully squeezing out the liquid
that it has caught in its meshes into a
gourd The observer begins to catch the
idea. 1t is not clean banket that she
wants, but the disagreeable, i'll smelling,
greasy scum that floats upon the surface
of the water.
In this simple manner and by these
queer mesns the Indians of that time COL
lected oil, not to give them light, but to
use as liniment to rub their poor joints
when swollen With rheumatism. This
was the old savage way Of Striking oil";;
for this oil gathered was petroleum,
which is now so commonly known as
kerosene, but was then called "Seneca
oil" and used only as medicine.
A certain Colonel Drake, who had a
farm in that part of the country, came to
the conclusion that somewhere in the
earth was to be found reservoir of oil,
which he could reach by digging for it
He believed that the oil which oozed out
of the rock and made greasy scum on
the Oil Greek waters came from some
where, and that somewhere he meant to
discover. His neighbors amused them.
selves by laughing at him and joking him,
much as Noah's neighbors did when he
was building the ark. Their tune was
changed, however when, in the summer
of 1859 Colonel Drake "struck OIL" In
the course of four months brakes we'll
had poured forth 1000 barrels of oil.
Then the nation took the oil fever.
Spectators rushed in, new wells we're
dug, and the once desolae fields bristled
with derricks.
Before brakes well was dug, manufac.
tories were in existence in which oil was
distilled out of coal, and called coal-oil.
Petroleum was found TO be go like this
substance that it too is often called coal
oil, and supposed to be distilled in the
great work shop of nature out of coal.
But that idea is incorrect. It is not
made out of coal, but it is closely cou.
nected with coal in this way, that both
coal and petroleum are made from the
plant life of the past, which in the course
of ages has been changed into these two
substances. If coal.oil were made out
Of coal, it would be found near the great
coal beds. This, however, is not always,
not even usually, the case.
We have seen how the coal beds were
formed by the great swamp forest, which,
under fresh. water and by means of greas
heat and pressure, were turned into coal.
Oil, it is thought, is formed by the softer
plants, sea weed and water.plants, which
have been, under saltwater and at a lesser
heat, distilled beneath the surface of the
earth. The oil being formed in the
water, of course foated on the top.
Sometimes it soaked into porous sand.
stone, sometimes it ran into holes and
fssures of the rocks. Usually it is found
associated with the saltwater under
which it was gradually formed.
1 have said that oil is distilled out of
plants; it is also distilled in much the
same way from the animal life of the
past; but re probably owe most of what
is sold to distillation of plants. The
rocks of many periods, besides that when
plants grew in such enormous quantities,
are full of oil. In the coal beds, you
remember, we found every kind of coal
showing the gradual change of vegetable
matter into coal-from peat through soft
coal to hard coal. In the same way Pc
trolcum is found in all the different forms
it takes on in its change-light oil, heavy
oil, btumen, and last, it is thought by
some, diamond. Ifa great mass of yege.
table matter is hesped up and left, and
after while examined, in the middle of
it is found an oily, tarry substance, like
one of the forms OF petroleum-bitumen.
With the oil and the saltwater in the
underground pools there is found guam
tity of gas formed from the petroleum.
And it is this gas, which is very much
squeezed up, that makes the oil spout up
when a boring reaches the reservoir.
When water and oil and gasexist togeth.
er in the same crevicc of the rock, the
water, being heaviest, will lie at the bot.
tom; on top of that will be the oil, and
above both Of them the squcezed.up gas.
Now you can see that if well is dug
at a, the crowded up gas will force up
ater in trying to get room for itself.
After the water has all come up, if the
gas is still very much compressed, the oil,
which has run down to B to take the
place of the water, will follow the flow
of water. If the power Of the expanding
gas has gone, the oil must then be pump.
ed up. Ii, however, the we'll has been
dug at G, gas comes up, and oil must be
pumped up when the gas his all escaped.
Natural gas is use to great extent to
light snd in part to heat great cities in
the coal and oil districts. 1t seems as